I have become aware of late that sometimes when I ramble on about “landing pages” and “home pages” on web sites and in emails, not everyone is clear what I am talking about.

Obviously that’s my error – because my job is to write and speak in a way that those who are kind enough to spend a moment reading/listening know what I am going on about.

So, here’s a clarification both of the meanings and why I think these points are so important.

Home pages on web sites are the entry point – the basic page that says “hello” to anyone popping in. As such the pages is there to be used either to give a flavour of who or what you are (through fancy design or straight text) and to give links to what you do (either through headlines of latest offers or just links to your general sections).

If you want to see an example of a home page try www.hamilton-house.com – or indeed any other web page that is just the address with no extra bits on the end.

Landing pages are set up for a different reason – they relate totally to a specific campaign. So, for example, if I am advertising the mailing lists that we sell, I won’t link to that page above, but to a page about our mailing lists. Or to be more specific I might link to a page about business lists, or one about consumer lists, or one about education lists.

(Some people argue that they like to send readers always to the home page because then the reader can see all that the company does. But I can find no evidence anywhere to say that such an approach works. Rather, the more specific the landing page, the better it works).

So with a landing page the approach is:

The email or sales letter develops excitement and interest in the product or service and links to the landing page which gives the detail, the features and so on.

The landing page should then explain how an order might be placed, how the reader might get more information etc. It leads the reader along a seamless route.

One of the great benefits of having an individual landing page for an advert (whether the advert is via the post or via email) is that it enables you to see how effective the advert is at getting interest.

Thus if you send out an advert and have a unique landing page you can see how many people hit that unique landing page immediately after the advert is received. (If the advert is an email you do this through tracking the email, if the advert is postal, you measure the number of hits on the specific page).

Now if you are getting few people onto that landing page, you know your advert has failed. If you get lots of people onto the landing page, but no direct sales or phone calls, you know the landing page has failed. If you get hits on the landing page plus lots of enquiries but no sales, you know the problem is in the office.

Either way, you know exactly where the problem is, and you can put it right and get the sales going. It is in fact the ideal selling situation – either the advert works, or you know exactly where in the process the selling has broken down and you can put it right.

Home pages and landing pages are just part of the work we undertake with our Velocity campaigns for clients. If you would like to know more please call 01536 399 000 or take a look at www.velocity.ac

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Tony Attwood